About Mears
Mears is the leading social housing repairs and maintenance provider in the UK and a growing presence in the domiciliary care market. Mears also has a subsidiary mechanical and engineering division. We’re an ambitious company with a powerful vision, operating in a growing market, with an excellent financial base, strong management, great people and excellent clients.
Our business is focused on the social housing and community sector where we bring the highest standards of care to people, their homes and their communities. We look to win long-term contracts for repairs and maintenance work, Decent Homes Standard upgrading, domiciliary care and improvement projects for community spaces, facilities and other factors affecting quality of life.
More than 5000 people work for Mears maintaining, repairing and upgrading people’s homes and supporting the wider community, work that improves the quality of life for hundreds of thousands of people in the UK. We carry out more than 3,000 repairs each day to 500,000 houses nationwide and we work in communities as diverse as inner city estates and remote rural villages.
Our purpose
Our purpose is to make a positive difference to the communities we serve by improving homes, improving neighbourhoods and improving lives. We do this by constantly striving to achieve the highest levels of customer satisfaction, efficiency and effectiveness in the social housing and community care sectors.
Our approach is based on the development of outstanding partnerships with employees, clients, tenants and the wider community. Success enables us to create great opportunities for our employees and sustainable value for our shareholders.
Our strategy
Our three key priorities are:
- To recruit, retain and develop excellent people, creating a strong, vibrant mix of new and experienced employees, with particular emphasis on recruiting and developing local people.
- To develop close, long-term partnerships with clients and communities, which enable us to achieve the best results, increase the scale and scope of what we do and contribute more.
- To constantly search for new and better ways to support clients and help tenants, enabling us to achieve better results for everyone, from minimising disruption to people’s lives to reducing cost and waste.
Our approach
The Mears approach is to listen carefully to people’s needs and to always try to find better ways to meet those needs. We believe tenants should be involved at all stages and always put their needs at the heart of what we do. We call our approach the Mears Way and we always try to capture and share the best ideas, processes and methods.
Our values
The way each of us acts makes a big difference to our reputation and success. Our values are here to help all of us behave in a professional, effective and efficient way, making Mears a great place to work and a great company to work with.
- We value our customers and communities, putting the needs of our clients and tenants at the heart of everything we do.
- We value teamwork, supporting each other, sharing ideas and never excluding others.
- We value personal responsibility, setting and achieving consistently high standards in our work and our conduct, and never adopting a negative attitude.
- We value innovation, being inventive in our approach and never allowing conventional thinking or bureaucracy to get in the way.
Our history
- 1988 – Mears Group starts life as a small, private building contractor.
- 1992 – First multidisciplinary maintenance and repairs contract from a Local Authority takes the company into support services for the first time. Annual turnover rises to £2.5 million.
- 1995 – Eight branches now in operation. Turnover is £10.7 million.
- 1996 – Chairman Bob Holt leads flotation of the company on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange, creating Mears Group plc. The company has 83 employees and turnover of £12 million.
- 1997-2001 – Key acquisitions completed including Haydon & Co, which alone adds more than 500 employees to the Group.
- 2005 – Turnover reaches £203.5 million and the order book reaches £1 billion for the first time. Mears Group wins ‘Decade of Excellence’ and ‘Best Performing Share Over 5 Years’ awards at the AIM Awards.
- 2006 – Mears has more than 2,500 employees and is among the top 20 companies in Europe in its sector for employment growth.
- 2007- Mears adds Careforce to the Group and grows to over 5000 employees